Video

Info

Adopting Sustainable Food Practices

This video segment adapted from United Tribes Technical College looks at how the traditional subsistence practices of indigenous people were once sustainable, unlike today's lifestyles. Most foods are now produced and transported using methods that can damage the environment and contribute to climate change.

Sustainable agriculture is healthy for the environment as well as for communities. Sustainable agriculture includes practices that minimize the use of nonrenewable natural resources in agriculture, promoting healthy ecosystems so that they will continue to be available for future generations. Sustainable farming may involve growing a variety of plants, which maintains genetic diversity and natural resistance to disease and pests. By rotating crops, nutrients in the soil can be kept at healthy levels and disease and pests can be controlled naturally without the use of fertilizers and pesticides.

Historically, family-owned small farms have been more likely to use sustainable methods than have large industrial farms. Industrial farms are under pressure to maximize yield while minimizing cost and may resort to practices that lower the quality of products and are harmful to the environment. Farmers who have a personal connection to the land tend to be more invested in the health of the land and the quality of their product. Smallholders can be more responsive to ecosystem perturbations and can solve food production challenges without the use of commercial pesticides, fertilizers, and hormones. In addition, they have the opportunity to grow varieties of plants that have not been genetically altered to improve long-distance shipment.

In the United States, food travels more than a thousand miles (1,609 km) on average to get from the farm to the supermarket to your table. However, as awareness about climate change and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions grows, people are becoming more aware of the environmental impact of the food supply chain. There has been a lot of discussion about "food miles"—how far a food travels—and it is becoming increasingly popular to eat foods grown locally.

However, a crop’s carbon footprint is not as simple as just how far it is shipped. In some cases, there may even be an environmental advantage to shipping a product long distances rather than trying to grow it locally. Some foods grow easily in warm tropical climates but would require a lot of fossil fuels to be grown in a greenhouse in a northern climate. Transportation accounts for about one-tenth of the food system's carbon emissions; the production and processing of foods, as well as the production of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, account for the majority of energy use in the food system. A food's environmental impact is better evaluated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) rather than simple food miles.

In recent years, community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs, where members purchase a share of a local farm, have become popular. Members help pay for the operations of the farm (including seeds, labor, and fertilizer) in return for locally grown, fresh produce. Farmers' markets are another way to support local agriculture and the sustainable food movement. But just because a food is local does not necessarily mean it was produced using sustainable methods; however, by establishing a relationship with your farmers, you can help influence growing practices by asking for sustainably grown foods.